The Year of Living Cheaply: A Retrospective

In 2009, dorky, inherently un-fun words like “thrifty” and “frugal” were paired early and often with fancy ones such as “chic” and “glamour.” Folks long accustomed to using triple coupons and cutting their own hair enjoyed newfound status among their neighbors: Instead of being viewed as eccentric oddballs—or worse, as killjoys or cheap bastards—they were perceived as prophetic gurus to be consulted for sage technical advice about unusual concepts like “leftover night” and “delayed gratification.”

Without further adieu, here’s a rehash of some of the top belt-tightening trends and “new normal” stories (along with a few personal recollections) from a year that many of us wouldn’t want to relive anytime soon:

January 1
The first reports come in showing that Christmas week 2008 shopper traffic was down 4.9% and retail spending was down 2.3% compared to 2007. The results are worse than what forecasters had recently anticipated, even with stores drastically discounting merchandise to try to entice last-minute shoppers.

January 21
I get the news that the magazine I am working for is closing, and that I am getting laid off along with the rest of the staff. (Among roughly five thousand other thoughts I have is this one: Hasn’t this Obama guy had enough time to fix the economy already?) We head to a pub to grab a bite and drown our sorrows, and, in one of the nicest gestures I can recall, the owner, upon hearing that we’d all lost our jobs, hands each of us an envelope with a $10 gift certificate inside.

January 22
Using tape and glue, I reattach the flapping rubber sole on one of my slippers. I’d planned on buying a new pair, then reconsidered and made do. I have since re-glued the same sole back on two more times this year.

February 14
Spending on Valentine’s Day is down about 5%. Cupid must get creative: Instead of buying roses, jewelry, and a night on the town, husbands clean the house and make dinner for their spouses.

February
Cheap escapism proves popular Part #2: Audiences go to the movies in record numbers in what is historically the season for bad movies to be released. The biggest hit? “Paul Blart: Mall Cop.”Coupon usage skyrockets: New membership at CouponMom.com, for instance, hits 1.5 million in February, up more than tenfold from a year before.

Another 650,000 or so jobs are lost this month, and the unemployment rate hits 8.1%.

March-ish
The consensus of opinion declares that conspicuous consumption is distasteful, if not stupid, even among the rich. Socialites exhibit shocking behavior by wearing ten-year-old dresses to parties.

I am the beneficiary of another incredibly touching gesture, this time in my kitchen. After overhearing many conversations and seeing his Dad around the house a lot more often, my five-year-old son asks me if I lost my job. “Yes,” I say, and since he’s always understood that my job was simply to “write stories,” I explain that not enough people wanted to buy the stories. His response: “I could buy some stories from you Daddy.”

April 28
For some strange reason, the New York Yankees haven’t sold enough of their $2,500 tickets, so the price is dropped to $1,250, which is still roughly a month’s worth of unemployment checks for the average person.

April
After sending pollsters and reporters around the country, Time magazine declares: “America Becomes Thrift Nation.” Among the factoids taken into consideration: About half of people surveyed said their economic situation has declined this year, while 57% now believe the American dream is harder to achieve.

MayNew York magazine takes note of “Recession Culture” and the recession’s impact on the city—including many positives, such as increased museum attendance and volunteering and, perhaps most surprising of all, people being nice to each other.

Another positive (for some folks, if not the economy as a whole): For four straight months, consumers decrease borrowing and ramp up saving, resulting in a national savings rate of 6.9% in May, the highest rate since the early 1990s.

The unemployment rate is 9.4%.

June 14
Writing an op-ed for the NY Times, Barbara Ehrenreich notes the rise of “recession porn,” a genre in which readers indulge in the human impact of the economic crisis, with stories of how “the super-rich give up their personal jets; the upper middle class cut back on private Pilates classes; the merely middle class forgo vacations and evenings at Applebee’s.”

June 20
The National Parks Service, in a move intended to offer some much-needed respite to folks hit hard by the recession, offers free admission to national parks on this and two other weekends later in the summer.

June 21
A survey indicates that spending on Fathers Day gifts drops by 4%. Most painful of all, the necktie remains a popular gift to dads everywhere.

July 8
The NY Times reports in its Fashion & Style section on the trend of buying (or even better, acquiring for free) secondhand baby toys, clothes, and gear. In light of the “new frugality,” buying a new $1,000 changing table is no longer a demonstration of how much you love your baby; all of a sudden, it instead demonstrates poor judgment.

August 11 to 18
A volunteer operation called Remote Area Medical offers free health care at the Los Angeles Forum, and even without much prior publicity, people flock to the arena in droves. Extra public buses are arranged by the city’s transportation system, and some people sleep overnight in line in order to receive treatment. All told, the unit takes care of 8,775 general medical visits which patients might have otherwise ignored—one of many disturbing health care statistics to come to light in 2009.

November 27
Black Friday. Also, by no small coincidence, it’s the anti-consumer movement’s Buy Nothing Day. The buyers seem to have the edge: Overall, there were more shoppers than the Black Friday of 2008, but they were tough customers who tended to buy only the most heavily discounted items.

A Freegan Summit takes place in Bristol, England. Members of the anti-consumer, free-everything movement hosts a three-course dinner for 250 people, cooked entirely using discarded (and free) food and ingredients.

“No heat” competitions arise in towns in New Jersey and around the country: Neighbors battle it out to see who will be the last to turn on their homes’ heat. Winner gets bragging rights, along with cheaper utility bills, obviously.

A new book called Scroogenomics argues that holiday gift-giving is highly inefficient, thereby bad for the giver, recipient, and the economy as a whole.

The rise in unemployment retreats, dropping to an even 10%.

December
A “Cash for Caulkers” program gets initial approval. The program will give homeowners rebates and incentives for certain home improvement projects, so things like adding insulation or installing solar panels would cost folks a whole lot less than usual.